"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland,
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island,
Who rules the World-Island and the various Choke points commands the world"
"Force does not reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary,it invests the victims with patience"
Honesty, integrity, ethics, morality, Truth just might be a more effective path to real Justice.
USA is yet much too drunk of its own illusions to see the writings on the walls Worldwide.

Monday, March 16, 2009

The damage done by the Chas Freeman saga.

The aborted appointment of Charles "Chas" Freeman as chairman of theNational Intelligence Council inflicts multiple costs on the U.S.national interest, some of which Freeman enumerated incharacteristically lucid fashion in his withdrawal statement(reproduced at The Cable). The affair demonstrates anew the strengthof the taboo against open and candid discussion in the United Statesof policy involving Israel. It thus perpetuates damage from U.S.policies in the Middle East formed without benefit of such discussion.It also perpetuates damage to the ultimate interests of Israel itself,where, ironically, no comparable taboo prevails. Not least, theFreeman matter demonstrates the power of calumny and misrepresentationto kill something as desirable as the appointment of an experiencedand insightful public servant.

Less immediately apparent but also serious is the damage toobjectivity and professionalism in the U.S. intelligence community.Intelligence officers can see through the smoke screens thrown up byFreeman's attackers, involving Saudi donations or out-of-contextcomments about China, and perceive the affair as exactly what it is:the enforcement of political orthodoxy about U.S. policy towardIsrael. (If any intelligence officers could not perceive this, theywould be abysmally poor analysts.) The message to intelligenceofficers is clear: Their work will be acceptable only if it conformsto dominant policy views. This standard is exactly the opposite ofwhat a professional and impartial intelligence service should provide.

The application of this or any other litmus test regarding policyviews to the filling of an intelligence position is contrary to thevery nature of intelligence, which does not make policy. It iscontrary to the concept that good intelligence officers are bright,perceptive, creative, and committed people -- and thus are bound tohave their own views on policy, including foreign policy -- but do notlet those personal views intrude into the performance of their jobs.That concept applies both to career intelligence officers and toanyone appointed to senior positions from the outside, à la Freeman.(The difference is that those from the outside have had earlieropportunities to express their policy views in public.)

Americans place heavy expectations on their intelligence officers tosave them from the follies of their elected leaders, and from thepublic's own delusions or inattention. Those expectations becameenormous in recent years because of the Iraq war, which the Bushadministration had sold to the public through an assiduous campaignthat involved the twisting and selective exploitation of intelligence.As the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asiafrom 2000 and 2005, I saw firsthand how the intelligence community wasexpected to make judgments that others would use as a politicallyconvenient substitute for making their own judgments about policy, toarticulate details about those judgments that others did not make timeto absorb, to resist the excesses of a propagandizing administrationthat others did not resist, to convey politically inconvenient truthsto the public while others who were much better positioned to speakpublicly did not convey them, to force water down the throat of apolicymaking horse that not only did not want to drink but did noteven want to be led to the water, and to call the horse to accountwhile it was stomping on the intelligence community's chest with itshooves.

A fundamental impediment to the intelligence community's meeting suchexpectations is that it is as much a part of the executive branch,commanded by the president, as those who make policy. It is extremelydifficult to try to perform the sort of miracle work that those whohave soured on the Iraq war have come to expect from intelligenceofficers without becoming vulnerable to the charge -- which we alsoheard repeatedly in recent years from proponents of the war -- thatofficers who begin to sound out of step with the administration'smessage are pursuing their own policy agenda. This is why there is along history in the United States of intelligence bending to policyimperatives, even in environments less intense than the one the Bushadministration created regarding Iraq. The intelligence communityneeds all the encouragement it can get -- not just retrospectiverecriminations -- to exercise any independence at all.

The Freeman affair gives it the opposite of such encouragement. Ifeven a former ambassador, speaking out as a private citizen, hascrossed a line rendering him ineligible for service in theintelligence community, the lines constraining those already withinthe intelligence bureaucracy are several times more confining. And theconfining has to do not just with public statements but with privatelyrendered judgments.

The main impact of this affair on intelligence work is not likely toinvolve the Arab-Israeli dispute, even though it is what concernsthose who shot down Freeman. The most important facts and patternsabout that tragic conflict are an open book; we don't need theNational Intelligence Council to tell us the implications of continuedexpansion of Israeli settlements, the consequences of rockets fired atIsraelis, or the effects of unending occupation on the emotions ofthose under occupation. The main effects will instead come, perhapssubtly and invisibly, with other issues on which a dominant policyimperative emerges -- such as the Iraq war, though not necessarilywith as intense an environment as what the Bush administration createdto sell that initiative. The effects will consist of intelligenceofficers being at least marginally less willing than they otherwisewould be to challenge the ethos surrounding the policy and to pointout ways in which the policy might be misguided. Some such policieswill be misguided, will come a cropper, and will lead to the usualrecriminations about how intelligence failed.

When that happens, those in Congress and elsewhere who acquiesced inthe character assassination of Chas Freeman -- or even worse,participated in it -- should ponder two things about intelligence.First, they should ask how they could expect intelligence officers toshow superlative courage in bucking political orthodoxy when theyshowed so little themselves. Second, they should reflect on how theirown pusillanimity in the face of the lobby that gunned down Freemanhas made it even less likely that intelligence officers will be ableto muster such courage in the future...

The counter-argument of the contrarians...who are not in the know...about the rogueops. of the Siamese twins...NSA/CIA2/MOSSAD/MI6...

Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared?

Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman affair this week, it might seem as if the Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly, however, the controversy over Freeman could be the Israel lobby's Waterloo.

Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are called "national intelligence estimates" on crucial topics of the day as guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.

A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however, crossed one of Washington's red lines by virtue of his strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Over the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of Israel that was both eloquent and powerful. Hours after the Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), launched what would soon become a veritable barrage of criticism of Freeman on his right-wing blog.[...]On March 10th, Freeman bowed out, but not with a whimper. In a letter to friends and colleagues, he launched a defiant, departing counterstrike that may, in fact, have helped to change the very nature of Washington politics. "The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth," wrote Freeman. "The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."

Freeman put it more metaphorically to me: "It was a nice way of, as the Chinese say, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys."[...]This new attention to the lobby's work comes at a critical moment, which is why the toppling of Freeman might be its Waterloo.

As a start, right-wing partisans of Israel have grown increasingly anxious about the direction that President Obama intends to take when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel, the Palestinians, Iran, and the Middle East generally. Despite the way, in the middle of the presidential campaign last June, Obama recited a pro-Israeli catechism in a speech at AIPAC's national conference in Washington, they remain unconvinced that he will prove reliable on their policy concerns. Among other things, they have long been suspicious of his reputed openness to Palestinian points of view.

No less important, while the appointments of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff were reassuring, other appointments were far less so. They were, for instance, concerned by several of Obama's campaign advisers -- and not only Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who were quietly eased out of Obamaland early in 2008. An additional source of worry was Daniel Shapiro and Daniel Kurtzer, both Jewish, who served as Obama's top Middle East aides during the campaign and were seen as not sufficiently loyal to the causes favored by hardline, right-wing types.

Since the election, many lobby members have viewed a number of Obama's top appointments, including Shapiro, who's taken the Middle East portfolio at the National Security Council, and Kurtzer, who's in line for a top State Department job, with great unease. Take retired Marine general and now National Security Advisor James L. Jones, who, like Brzezinski, is seen as too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and who reputedly wrote a report last year highly critical of Israel's occupation policies; or consider George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, who is regarded by many pro-Israeli hawks as far too level-headed and even-handed to be a good mediator; or, to mention one more appointment, Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell and now a National Security Council official who has, in the past, made comments sharply critical of Israel.

Of all of these figures, Freeman, because of his record of blunt statements, was the most vulnerable. His appointment looked like low-hanging fruit when it came to launching a concerted, preemptive attack on the administration. As it happens, however, this may prove anything but a moment of strength for the lobby. After all, the recent three-week Israeli assault on Gaza had already generated a barrage of headlines and television images that made Israel look like a bully nation with little regard for Palestinian lives, including those of women and children. According to polls taken in the wake of Gaza, growing numbers of Americans, including many in the Jewish community, have begun to exhibit doubts about Israel's actions, a rare moment when public opinion has begun to tilt against Israel.

Perhaps most important of all, Israel is about to be run by an extremist, ultra right-wing government led by Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including the even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well as a host of radical-right religious parties. It's an ugly coalition that is guaranteed to clash with the priorities of the Obama White House.

As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is also guaranteed to prove a crisis moment for the Israel lobby. It will present an enormous public-relations problem, akin to the one that faced ad agency Hill & Knowlton during the decades in which it had to defend Philip Morris, the hated cigarette company that repeatedly denied the link between its products and cancer. The Israel lobby knows that it will be difficult to sell cartons of menthol smooth Netanyahu-Lieberman 100s to American consumers.[...]So here's the reality behind the Freeman debacle: Already worried over Team Obama, suffering the after-effects of the Gaza debacle, and about to be burdened with the Netanyahu-Lieberman problem, the Israel lobby is undoubtedly running scared. They succeeded in knocking off Freeman, but the true test of their strength is yet to come....

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).

Elie, HK RIP we will for ever love you so very much

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." - Samuel Adams

HK For EVER

RIP For Ever a HERO

Elie , RIP !

With tears in their eyes and flowers in their hands people paid tribute to their national hero. Sad at the loss, which can not be compensated yet pride was all over their faces,sacrificed their son of the soil. His was a death for a noble cause of dying for one's own country. Such men are not born everyday, they belong to the rare class of humanity, who are an example in themselves, and they are the ones who set precedents. Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, HK,is an unprecedented Leader, a Hero, and a Legend for ever.